Alina's Adventures

Arboretum and analytic posturing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Various excerpts from "Analytic Posturing" series currently online at the NewerYork. Take a peek.

Stella Radulescu's hallowed memory holes.

Reading Stella Vinitchi Radulescu's I Scrape the Window of Nothingness scooped me out so thoroughly that only scaffolding remained. The scaffolding and the notes jotted down in a sketchbook while crouched on a rock in the arboretum. A sample:

untitled 3

the truth belongs
to those
who never say
good-bye

or lie about
being
here    in love
with falling
gods

Where to begin? I'll begin in the black hole- the place where the literature of dissent abandoned its respect for language. Start with the sparse aesthetic of the political dictatorship, how it led to the absurdism of Eugene Ionesco, the veiled fruits of Herta Muller. What remains after totalitarianism (and utopian propaganda) rendered ordinary words meaningless.  

Now progress to the shores of democracy where people know billboards better than the native plants in their backyards- look around, it's a brave new world and nothing is out of your reach if you're willing (and able) to buy it.

Alas, the hyper-mediated consciousness of consumer culture does not resuscitate language. Perhaps there is disappointment for the political exile upon discovery that democracy honors language by accident- and only on occasion. 

The poet returns to the page with a mistrust of what man creates to make sense of things. No man-made signs can be trusted to offer truth. The words betray as swiftly as clock hands put us at another border, begging to be accepted into another country where only the moon is familiar.

But there are seasons, stars, and particular forms of light by which the world can be known. To read Radulescu is to re-learn geography. To jettison the GPS maps for enfleshed topography. To tell time by what we glimpsed in childhood faces or the heat of a mother's hand. 

lend me your tongue
I buried mine a long time ago
there was no place for such a flame...

And then to hide what we know in our marrow but cannot afford to say- maybe because it fails to signify but really there are no words. No words unmolested.

The scene in Radulescu's poems winds through a distinctly liminal space- the thin skin stretched between light and dark. The space where superstitions are more legible than street signs. The space becomes the place where one expects the epiphany. For Radulescu, the poet's sacred absolutions- the pen, the paper, the attentive expectation- rarely give rise to revelation. She remains alone with a past she can't verbalize and a pen that draws blood without offering us a sentient body.

Other things I found: There are dogwood blossoms but they don't feel green. The flower's sensuality is held back. We are deprived of the resonance by which a bloom holds our attention. There is the ghost of Paul Celan. There is a moon (an eternity of moons). And other characters, or words, which return to re-orient us. There is ice, silence, wind, time, and light. There are eyes, scars, vowels, shadows, children, lovers... 

The visual aspects are not effusive. In this regard, her poems resemble Eastern Orthodox icons more than photographs, oil paintings, or watercolors. Nothing of gouache's tender, wistful touch. The heaviness of holy things- gold foil on wood, the abstracted solemnity of faces who have seen holy things and yet cannot speak of them. The point at which silence morphs into reverence. The point at which she earns my trust.

She brings us to this point again and again and then refuses to go any further. I savor the non-adulatory awe- love the courage of language so bare you can see the swollen joints, the skinny knees knocking together.

Ultimately, what I find in Radulescu's poems is inseparable from what I know about being a Romanian defector: the past is easy to recount but impossible to translate. So I trust the bark of a tree for what it doesn't say. Maybe only a tree is equipped to handle the holy. Maybe the televangelists despise what they cannot touch. 

a poet dying seeks refuge and
sets the page on fire

Radulescu offers her poems to a culture marked by impatience, a culture disinterested in the ineffable. Her courage comes from refusing to cater, pander, or prevaricate. Among my favorites from this book- "1955"; "bells & bones"; "rough winter, cold meals"; "starting point"- emblematic of her voice.

Sketch by George Terry McDonald [source]

I Scrape the Window of Nothingness will be available for purchase on March 12th, but you can pre-order a copy now from Orison Books.

"But why should I do this if you just finished saying Radulescu doesn't offer any revelations or certainties? Why bother if the poems won't fulfill me?"

Because any poet who fulfills you is a one-night stand on the bedside table; and what seems acrobatic at night looks foppish on two legs. Fulfillment is only temporary, a flash in the pan, but the silence of unspeakable things beguiles indefinitely. This is Radulescu's poetic gift- to convey the ineffablility of exile's place and the way language desecrates as much as it preserves. Read her for want of a moon.

"femme bleue" (in French)
"the earth begins" (translated by Luke Hankins)
"night in four voices" (in French)
"flood" (YouTube reading by the author)
"some words suicidal" 
more poems at Orison

Rust a relic of Darden Cemetery.

Why not take our sketchbooks to a tiny cemetery and see what falls on the page?

As a prompt, the kids "collected" nouns- everything from oak leaves to infant tombstones. The Eldest settled into leaves and quickly began sketching the peculiar lineaments of lichen on stones.

Prophet copies the letters from gravestones- she feels confident when copying letters because they don't flip around on her as much. What is more difficult about dyslexia- the lagging behind on reading curves or the sense that letters play tricks with you, a fundamental mistrust of the written word?

Gnome abandoned her sketchbook to chase a squirrel. Something about the shadows and the silhouettes of a four-year-old's sketchbook wanted to become a story... but there is not time enough in the universe for all the stories I want to tell.

Upon her return, Gnome attempted various sketches before getting frustrated that her drawings "didn't match." The eraser washed across the paper.

"It doesn't have to match," I said, "just to capture the way you see it." Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

The Eldest sauntered through a corridor of graves and paused briefly to remind me how easy it is to get frustrated- and how hard to crawl out of it. There are moments when he takes life in stride (this one) and moments when he stomps hard enough to hurt.

The fence captivated all four of us so that we found ourselves sketch-collecting it together. Four people scrunched down like pinecones catching the fence from different angles.

I wondered who made the small fence- it didn't look like anything I've seen around Tuscaloosa- maybe a small business that passed away. Is there irreverence in attributing death to a business, in saying aloud what we believe at heart- that the life of a business bears more value than the life of children whose mothers raise them alone, scrimping every penny, worrying about whether they can afford the power bill this month?

How will they blend their colored pencils to capture the vagaries of rust?

We collected nouns and marveled over rust. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, those with enough mullah may also earn rust.

Best TPT Freebies Series: Art and art history.

 

Art Lesson: Value (Art Outside the Box)
Art Doodle: Warm Up (Art Chick)
Art Elements: Space and Shape (Art Outside the Box)
Rainbow color and color wheel lesson (White Tiger Renee)
Art Elements: Color and Pointallism (Art Outside the Box)
Rainbow Roosters Art Project (Purple Paintbrush)
Math and Art: Fraction Pizzas (Art Outside the Box)
America's Southwest landscape art lesson and video (Deep Space Sparkle)
Crayon pop art lesson (Art with Mrs. Smith)
Helen Frankenthaller and the Art of the Stain (Art Lady)
Art Lesson: Shading and shadow (White Tiger Renee)
Art Activity: Patchwork names (Tim Donnelly)
Egyptian faces art project (Deep Space Sparkle)
Principles of Design: Proportion and Review (Whitney Panetta)
Abstract monotype printmaking for youth (Jessica Barber)
Gabriel Moreno art nouveau style pencil portraits (J Thomas Uhl)
"Guess It" game (Little Thinkers) Use the word as an art prompt.
Art history timeline (Art Teacher Diaries)*
Franz Marc's "Fate of the Animals" (The Art Curator for Kids)
Van Gogh art history cut and paste (Joseph Lemien)
Toulouse-Latrec art history cut and paste (Joseph Lemien)
"Gallery of the Louvre" art history cut and paste (Joseph Lemien)
"Say NO to Nazism" pop neorealist drawing lesson (Art Lesson Plans)
MOMA virtual lesson and field trip (nearpod)

 Note: An asterisk (*) indicates a foldable which can be used with an interactive notebook or lapbook. Most of our science, math, nature study, creative writing, and global study work is composition notebook-based. A tilde (~) indicates a printable book, or emergent reader.

The old cattle barn in Hurricane Creek Park.

Fred Fisher, the husband of Angelynn Parks Fisher, spent many happy days at Hurricane Creek where his father-in-law, the late Stanley Parks, owned a large chunk of property. Upon the death of the late Stanley Parks, this property was sold to the Trust for Public Land, a land trust, for the purpose of fulfilling Stanley's wish that the public enjoy this land for perpetuity.

This area is known as Hurricane Creek Park, though the Friends of Hurricane Creek (disclaimer: I am on the Board of this organization) would prefer the name be Stanley Parks Nature Preserve. If you walk the trails, you'll discover all kinds of stories. 

The North Loop leads through the area where Mr. Fisher once raised a barn and kept cattle.

You can recognize the premises by the mossy fence and the massive old tree, a survivor of storms and incubator of stories.

The relics of remain to be interpreted. Once upon a time, there was a barn built painstakingly by men to house and nurture cattle. 

A tornado whirled through and demolished the barn and the workshop, the hallowed family places and spaces, pockets of nature that begin to feel like home. What you see is the remains-- what looks like junk from here is the skeleton of a family story.

What was this? What can we read beyond the rust? How do we keep the past from haunting us by its incompleteness?

After roaming through the old stable area, remembering Mr. Fisher mentioned horses- horseback rides through the woods at family events- I think of how much care we put into places that disappear. How much we hope in our hearts that someone will keep these places from disappearing completely. How only stories keep breathing when material expires.

The Eldest looks for tadpoles in the lake created by Mr. Fisher as a watering hole for the cattle. If you're looking for stories written in trees, visit Hurricane Creek Park and wander through the North Loop. Do it for the late Stanley Parks, whose family left this land for you.

Tomatoes, crusty bread, and feta cheese: A poetic combination.

And the truth is the first girl I ever kissed, tasted like tomatoes.

And I know this, because the second girl I ever kissed tasted like pepper.

It wasn’t unpleasant.

It’s just that I was expecting tomatoes.

 (Excerpt from Koyczan's "Tomatoes")

A poetic feast of tomato poems...

"Cherry Tomatoes" by Sandra Beasley
"Tomatoes" by Shane Koyczan
"Ode to Tomatoes" by Pablo Neruda (plus riotous illustration)
"September Tomatoes" by Karina Borowicz
A shape poem variant on a tomato poem by Victor Hugo
"Patio Tomatoes" by Krista Lukas
"Tomatoes" by Stephen Dobyns
"Roma" by Matthew Dickman
"After Tomato Picking" by Maria Garcia Teutsch
"Fried Green Tomatoes" by Pris Campbell
"Diary from a Tomato Cannery, 1912" by Sandy Solomon
"Tomato Hornworm", a great teaching poem
"I Used to Like Tomatoes" by Flora Veit Wild

Image source: Gathering Books

Best TPT Freebies Series: Middle school math and geometry.

 

Interactive notebook starter kit (Mrs. West Knows Best)*
Interactive notebook bookmark (Performing in Fifth Grade)
Tips for teaching with math games (Laura Candler)
Math Comics: Fractions (David Rickert)
Fraction foldable (Teaching with a Cup of Tea)*
Simplifying squid fraction packet (Inspire Teachers)
Pizza fraction fun for equivalents (Laura Candler)
Mixed numeral & improper fraction puzzle set (Dennis McDonald) 
Simplifying fractions bingo (Laura Candler)
Comparing fractions foldable (Abby Sandlin)*
Factors and multiples card game (Literacy and Math Ideas)
Fractangle puzzles (Ms Haslacker Teaches 5th)
Place value foldable (Suzanne Karim)*
Graph foldable (Sonja McGinnis)*
Notorious scatter plot worksheet (Mr Doll)
Greatest common factor foldable (Hodges Herald)*
Factor race math game (Laura Candler)
Common divisibility rules foldable (That Math Lady)*
Decimal models worksheet (Michelle Moon)
Writing decimals in expanded number form (Raise the Rigor)* 
Understanding decimals foldable (Fun in Room 4B)*
Decimal operations flow chart (Susan Thomas)
Converting fractions and decimals foldable (Middle School Math Moments)*
Why decimals repeat: Converting fractions to decimals (IgnitED)
Decimals art (Susan Ferdman)
Dividing decimals (Chelle)
Pirate decimal game (Teaching 5th Grade in Georgia)
Fractions and demicals reader's theater script (Rosalind Flynn)
Basketball throws calculations (Mindy Rosenberg)
Teacher guide: Decimals and fractions grade 5 (The iTeach Hub)
Teacher for a Day: Decimals, Percents, Fractions (Performing in Fifth Grade)
Maths about me activity (Mrs. West Knows Best)
Gallon robots craftivity (Laura Candler)
Units of weight foldable (Tanya Villacis)*
Customary measurement conversions foldable (Laura Candler)*
Mean, median, mode and range foldable (That Math Lady)*
Tangram polygon explorations (Laura Candler)
Type of triangle foldable (Ambedu)*
Lines, rays, and segments foldable (That Math Lady)*
Scientific notation foldable (Miss Shanky's Math Shack)*
Number properties foldable (That Math Lady)*
Understanding decimals foldable (Fun in Room 4B)
Triangles math foldable (That Math Lady)*
Finding perimeter foldable (To the Square Inch)*
Mystery Perimeters learning packet (Laura Candler)
Island Conquer Game: Area and perimeter (Laura Candler)
Understanding expressions foldable (Fun in Room 4B)*
Solving a system of equations foldable (The Crafty Math Teacher)*
Slope foldable (Bovio Math Creations)
Spot Math (Ying Zhang)

Note: An asterisk (*) indicates a foldable which can be used with an interactive notebook or lapbook. Most of our science, math, nature study, creative writing, and global study work is composition notebook-based. A tilde (~) indicates a printable book, or emergent reader. 

Thoughts on a late winter stroll through Hurricane Creek Park.

It's almost that time of the year when everything begins blooming at Hurricane Creek, and each walk brings encounters with new forms of life.

We took Bunica and Gary along the bike paths this weekend... because they'd never hiked the creek before and the weather begged us into the woods.

Paused for a precipitous view near a woodhewn bench. The water was high- perfect for paddling. "May God remind us greener grass is not cleaner grass," I think.

The kids gaze down at the creek, listen to the water churn over the rocks. We can count on the neverending jazz improv of Hurricane Creek's riffles.

"Look mom, it's a shelf fungus!" Our necks crane skywards, climbing the bark of a dead pine.

Drawing closer, the color is soft, the impressions feather. Watercolor or gouache. Pastels. 

How one hefty shelf captures a falling gymnast, a piece of pinestraw performing a perfect split.  

I have to admit that I kept hearing Amy's voice over my shoulder- and missing the time we spent exploring together with the kids. Hurricane Creek is one of our places but it doesn't strike me so poignantly until I'm there without her.

And then it strikes me again when I see something that would make Amy laugh or else just groan.

At which point I realize, again, how little time in the world for all the people I love and value. The people-I-love commune dreams return... how perfect to have everyone near enough that a holler would be all that stood between us.

Unable to hold people near, I wave from faraway, beckon "come here", whisper "look here, see what we found", and hope somehow that the spirit of love and friendship moves from one open palm to another, sustained through the seasons of life.

Best TPT Freebies Series: Roamschooling, geography, and adventures in the field.

Fire Safety: Digging your own fire pit (Christine Kight)
How to avoid lyme disease (Christine Kight)
Bug Scavenger Hunt (Green Grubs Garden Club)
Backyard Ecology Assessment (Science Stuff)
Garden Discovery activity (KinderKay)*
Read and Write on the Road packet (Erin Wing)
Cloud Hunt Bingo (Green Grubs Garden Club)
Green Events Calendar with Dates From Around the World (Green Grubs Garden Club)
Renewable energy sources foldable (Sandy's Science Stuff)*
Earth Day Is Everyday (Katy Did Doodles)~
Nature-Themed Cootie Catcher (Green Grubs Garden Club)
Math in the Outdoors: Bar graphs (Teach to Tell)*
Race to Write 12 for on the road fun (Laura Candler)
Animal Dwellings and Debris Hut Construction video lesson (Deep River Visions)
Daisy Chains Activities (Green Grubs Garden Club)
Public speaking or TED talks worksheet (Laura Randazzo)

 Note: An asterisk (*) indicates a foldable which can be used with an interactive notebook or lapbook. Most of our science, math, nature study, creative writing, and global study work is composition notebook-based. A tilde (~) indicates a printable book, or emergent reader. 

Collecting concrete and abstract nouns.

There are so many ways in which writing intersects with learning at home. Yesterday, I couldn't get the juices flowing so I played around in my notebookm making lists of favorite nouns- words like derby, montage, cellulose, and bravado- when I realized the activity could be extended to the include the kids. Let's face it, everyone has favorite nouns, including toddlers who spout off their affection for Thomas the Tank engine in grocery store lines.

So I whipped together a quick worksheet for the Eldest to distinguish between abstract and concrete nouns and then to assemble a collection of 50 favorites each. What I didn't mention was that the collection would be used for next week's writing and poetry prompts. We live with our choices, right? Live with and through them until the verses set us free. 

You can print your own free version by right-clicking the PDF below. I hope you enjoy it and do it along with your kids.

NOUNS: ABSTRACT VS. CONCRETE (PDF, 2 pages)

Little paper houses on the mantle.

The holiday mantle decorations are packed and put away for next year. Things feel normal again, now that my armless wood statue girl is back in her place beneath the antlers. 

"Why do you love that thing so much?" my husband asked earlier in our marriage. At the time, I didn't have an answer but today the shadow of a reason emerges. I like her because she's not smiling and because she looks as if she's cut from bone. 

A statue carved from bone.... What if death was acknowledged by carving a statue of the each person from their large leg bone? Imagine all the space we'd save only one bone from our bodies was preserved and the rest was donated to hospitals and organ banks. 

The Eldest has been helping Gnome make a paper craft village from the book given to her by Santa this year. Gnome expressed a desire to see her village "grow up" on the mantle. 

Each house has its own set of residents, including pets. Dogs get their own houses but cats are expected to live indoors with their owners.

And here is the book by Delphine Doreau, My Town: A Little World For You To Build. If you aren't sure the book is worthwhile, download a few of Delphine's freebies (posted below) and see if your appetite changes.

Delphine Doreau's Generous Freebies

 Free sample advent calendar house printable
Baby bear wreath printable
Surprise origami wrap printable
Angel ornaments printable
Mini owl paper dolls printable
3-D cuboctahedron puzzle printable
Delphine's dollhouse giftbox printable
Madame Sapin 3-d printable
Black and white matrioshka paper dolls printable
Colorful matrioshka paper dolls printable
Delphine's adorable hanging birdhouse printable
3-D polyhedron ornament printable

Vinegar in my blood.

The King's cabbage salad.

Romanian girls aren't raised on sugar and spice and everything nice. We grow into our skins with the tangy sourness of vinegar and red cabbage salad. 

Vinegar may not smell pretty but magic doesn't work wonders through smell. The vinegar in our blood preserves the words until we're ready to crack open the jar and unpickle the nascent poetry. 

"The French poet, Rimbaud, predicted that the next great crop of writers would be women. He was the first guy who ever made a big women's liberation statement, saying that when women release themselves from the long servitude of men they're really gonna gush. New rhythms, new poetries, new horrors, new beauties. And I believe in that completely."

Surely Patti Smith craved vinegar when she made this remark....

Additional meditations on vinegar by minds worth excavating:

"What I've learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head. First there's the vinegar-lipped Reader Lady, who says primly, "Well, that's not very interesting, is it?" And there's the emaciated German male who writes these Orwellian memos detailing your thought crimes. And there are your parents, agonizing over your lack of loyalty and discretion; and there's William Burroughs, dozing off or shooting up because he finds you as bold and articulate as a houseplant; and so on. And there are also the dogs: let's not forget the dogs, the dogs in their pen who will surely hurtle and snarl their way out if you everstop writing, because writing is, for some of us, the latch that keeps the door of the pen closed, keeps those crazy ravenous dogs contained." 
        - Anne Lamott

"As the best wine doth make the sharpest vinegar, so the deepest love turneth to the deadliest hate." 
        - John Lyly

"I was a thorn rushing to be with a rose, vinegar blending with honey…
Then I found some dirt to make an ointment that would honor my soul…
Love says, “You are right, 
but don’t claim these changes. 
Remember, I am wind. You are an ember I ignite." 
        - Rumi

A volcano simulation with Bunicu and Pam.

Bunicu uses plaster to prepare the volcano as Prophet watches. He explains that plaster won't get sticky until you add water and then mold the wet plaster into a shape.

There are old black and white photographs from Romania-- photos from my baby days-- where I lay naked in the crook of his arm after a bath. I recognize the hands and how little they have changed-- still big enough to move mountains and gentle enough to soothe nightmares.

 I only notice the cobwebs on the windows in retrospect-- when I see a photo, for example.

The plaster is dry-- and the volcano simulation is ready to go. "Everybody outside," Bunicu declares. The fastidious metallurgist within seeks extra cardboard just in case this volcano gets wild.

"Oooooh," admires the Eldest in his best faux-Romanian accent.

I try not to mention what strikes me at first glance-- hey, that's a really little volcano. The captive audience awaits an explosion.

Soon, the Professor is doing what he does best-- pontificating about chemical processes and molecular physics. It's my favorite part, if only because it brings back childhood memories of dinner.

In his hand circles a bottle of citric acid mixed with red food dye. This citric acid will be key to the volanic eruption.

"Hey," offers the Eldest, "you know vinegar works just as well-- maybe even better-- than citric acid."

"Bah," says the Professor. 

The Professor (a.k.a. Bunicu) begins to squirt the citric acid solution into the tube which runs under and up the small plaster volcano.

A small trickle of red frothy liquid spittles up from the top of the volcanic cone.

"Oh no!" yells Gnome. "It's not working!"

The Professor continues his patient infusion. Finally, overhearing the Gnome's huffing and puffing, he asks what isn't working.

"The volcano!" shouts Gnome. "The volcano's not 'splodin'." 

"I'll be right back"- and the Eldest returns with a bottle of white vinegar procured from somewhere in the nether-regions of the kitchen cupboard.

As the Professor watches, the Eldest pours a capful over the volcano's top-- "so the baking soda will fizz."

When it fizzes and soaks the cardboard box, a satisfied smirk appears on Gnome's face. "Now it's splodin'," she tells us. 

"What did she say?" the Professor asks patiently.

"Oh. She said thank you."

Did I say thank you, dad? For all the ways your hands still grace our lives. Thank you.

Find small treasures in the woods behind our house.

The ground is still wet and the scent of frozen soil wafts upwards, beguiling us further into the backyard woods. Each of us decides to select a special, secret something for sharing. I find the prospect dizzying- there is too much to see and say, too many changes since we walked through the woods last week.

After the long winter rains, tiny bobbed mushrooms peak out from the foliage. It is Prophet who spies the shroom, and Prophet who kneels by its side and tries to sniff it.

"This is my special thing," she says, "but I wish it had friends, you know, so they could be a fairy circle." 

Gnome wants us to come and rub the furry vine winding round a slender tree trunk. "It's not real fur," chides Prophet.

But Gnome refuses to be diminished- "Then how come he grew it? Hmph."

The Eldest lingers near a light orange fungus-- "a lichen growing on dead wood," he determines. Prophet wants to know what he's found; it's situated high enough in the trees for her to miss the view.

"It's symbiosis," he says as he removes the deadwood to show his little sisters. While he thinks mutualism, I think death and rotting and how the world is replenished by what we make of the recent past, how we churn it into legends and stories.  

"What about yours mom?" Mine is the view through bitten evergreen leaf, the other side of magnolia's velveteen dress. At their urging, I remove the leaf and we take turns putting it to our face and peering through it like a glasses. 

It is quiet. A dog barks in the distance towards our house. Home calls. Pinka needs food. We walk back in our heads, brewing wooded secrets.

The gift of plants, a printable freebie.

All the things I wanted to study with the kids were in my head, so I took a little time between nursing a croupy Gnome and rubbing beeswax under Prophet's red nose to make a handout, a hopeful activity. 

There's a simple handwork embroidery project on the reverse. A little freebie for celebrating plants and their role in the sustenance of life. Download and enjoy.

THE GIFT OF PLANTS (PDF)

Meet Gregor, made with tiny hands.

Made with help from Bunicu and Pam, Gregor is currently hanging by the big front window where he can greet visitors and solicitors.

I took his name.

The cut rose looks beautiful in a vase but why can't we bear the sight of her roots?

I took his name because part of me wanted to believe marriage was an all-consuming fire that no one could bear in their unadulterated, premarital form. Marriage changed the life and its subjects. Name change seemed slight in comparison to the overall geist.

To be fair, the romance began much earlier than the wedding vows intended to seal it. The little girl who wanted to be Joan of Arc grew into the woman waving signs along the sidewalks of Boston, D.C., and Birmingham, her parched lips repeating again and again “NOT IN MY NAME.” She shouted until she grew hoarse and finally lost her voice. To that woman who wore black for all the innocent victims of war, her protest upheld the magic powers of a name-- the dissident’s belief that words can change the world, the existentialist’s assumption that we embody our ethics with every choice and breath. She didn’t care if she marched with strangers or friends so long as she walked uphill, lifting her vocal chords for what the media called a losing battle but what sounded to her like the stained glass echo of a cathedral chorus.

Such a woman has no business taking a man’s name after having worked to hard to say her own.

But I took his name anyway.

I took his name because romance felt sexier than revolution.

But also because my name sounded like boiled cabbage and foreign accents and the contaminations of communist history. “Stefanescu” is a common name in Romania, but raised eyebrows never ceased to remind me how uncommon such a name sounded in native Alabama drawl. “Stefa-what?” being the question I’d learned to anticipate at gas stations, courthouses, and extracurricular sports.

So maybe I took his all-American name to reduce the mispronunciation of my own. Or perhaps I thought C. sounded less suspicious than Stefanescu. Alina C. could be a good mom. Alina Stefanescu, on the other hand, couldn’t sit still.

The woman who took his name flips through albums containing photos of her previous versions. She looks back and admires the awkward, half-smiling teenager with unmanicured, soil-friendly hands. The girl in the photos doesn’t consider being anyone else except a future heroine. The girl in the photos is still trying to grow into the discounted Guess jeans she could barely afford.

I took his name because I come from an immigrant family that went red-white-and-blue. During the first year of college, my parents divorced each other, severed ties with their Romanian love stories, and moved into large, accommodating, American marriages brewed with the tasteful banality of Pottery Barn pieces. Suddenly, my email account inbox featured family events hosted on the July 4th.

My husband’s parents didn’t need to divorce and remarry to become authentic Americans. They were born here. Their first wails echoed down the sterile hallways of US hospitals. They didn't undergo the awkward process known as "naturalization." They’d always held hooplas on the 4th of July.

So I took his name. Erased my name to become another C. in a ceaseless succession of C.'s because, of course, every C. wife since Christ walked the sea of Galilee took her husband’s name.

But the external change failed to fix the internal discrepancies. C.'s disliked flag-burners while Alina valued free speech more than sacred fabrics. C.'s voted Republican while Alina couldn’t bring herself to vote. C.'s were “pro-life” while Alina wondered why so many people who were pro-life valued the gestating life of fetuses over the life of suffering human beings. C.'s valued consumer prosperity while Alina feared it like the plague-- for its generous numbness, its splendid distraction, the danger of generalized, nonspecific good times.

As Alina C., I had a responsibility to fit the family heritage. Looking different was fine so long as I didn’t think too differently. The pregnancies prevented me from thinking too deeply about my failures as a C. Every family needs a black sheep. Some families need several. I’d find a way to fit in.

I took his name because my in-laws spent years in the belly of the marital-problem whale but stayed married anyway and maybe the name was a hedge against my own family’s legacy of divorce. The lucky talismans I’d been raised to revere weren’t much help from across the ocean. Not even the Carpathian mountain legends remained stable-- unstable stories are hard to recall, harder still to re-tell.

My childhood came back to me in another language-- a mystical, fragile, evocative language, a tongue difficult to translate. Going from Romanian to American is like moving from magic to meal-planning.

Finding no middle ground, I looked for clear and present signs of impending good fortune. I read surnames like self-help books or guides on how to walk through the minefield of entitled maskulinities.

The right name was a free ride to happy places-- destinations like Disneyland commercials where everyone laughed and smiled. Stefanescus divorced but Coryells stayed married for life.

I took his name because it mattered to him-- and I liked how much he wanted me. I kept this a secret from my Stefanescu self because she was the sort of feminist who wouldn’t approve. Maybe people were right about feminists. Maybe they were just bitter. Maybe they didn’t know how good it felt to let go and get lost. To become a well-coiffed woman.

I liked how he wanted me so much that he was willing to act like an amoeba and settle for nothing less than swallowing me whole. I took his name and gave our children his name and tried (so hard) to feel proud that we were all the same.

Instead, I discovered unspeakable shame. The shame of selling out.

Because I never became a C. and he married a Stefanescu and when a C. marries a Stefanescu what comes logically is Stefanescu-C. but somehow we become our inherited mutations and so Alina C.-- this mutant concoction-- acknowledges how marriage alters a woman while Husband Coryell stays unchanged.

My mother was a champion downhill skier, a physician who took flying lessons at age forty to overcome her fear of flying, and yet she married my father and permitted the mutation. She took his name. 

I took his name. When friends asked why, I said "it's complicated." What I meant was wordless-- a persistent malaise at denying my family history and heritage to assume a foreign identity that, for all external appearances, approximated the coveted "normal."

Whatever my rationale for taking his name, the truth is simple: the name doesn’t suit me. Though I love my husband's family, I don’t want to be a C.. I don’t want to use air fresheners after taking a shit and I don’t want to put down my protest signs and become an apologist for cultural Christianity or neo-imperialism. I don’t want gift pedicures or marble countertops. And it still makes me cry sometimes to think of how my government terrorizes innocent civilians in foreign countries.

I'm an idealist, a tree-hugger, a person who thinks courage involves crying. I don't care if America looks exceptional. At this point, I'd rather we look humane and decent. And I will never ever ever so long as my name is Alina stop believing that love can save the world.

I lack a Protestant work ethic. I don’t have ambitions for a bigger house or to be the president of any association. I don’t want people to admire me, and I am humbly grateful for every friend and stranger who sees the best in me rather than the obvious worst.

I don’t want to be cool or coy or sexy. I like cool, coy, and sexy things but I don’t want to be a thing and I’m working on unliking the ways in which my mind objectifies others.

I’m a restless, homeschooling, wanderlusty dilettante who never needed to get married. When I agreed to do it with the only male that had been my equal partner in crime, I pretended the equality could persist if I signed onto the romantic myth of amoebal maskulinity. I was wrong.

I don’t want to smile stoically and tell young lovers that marriage is “hard work.” I will never tell anyone to stay married “for the children”-- no child should carry such a burden or be tormented by the guilt of being the world’s navel. Marriage is not (and should never be) an agreement to be deformed but an agreement to be formed together, alongside another human being. When marriage deforms a person, divorce is the most honest, decent solution. 

In this castle I've built with my husband, we shoot the moon more than we build. Often, we tear a wall down and watch to see what grows in its place. It feels more like wonder than work.

There's no how-to manual for building the castle that you imagine. The risk doesn't settle into the cushion comfort of stability. We admire our callouses and weave stories from scar tissue.

If I thought changing my name would secure my marriage, I didn't bargain for the way in which it denatured me. So now I'm going through the ardorous and unbelievably exciting process of changing it back. Not because I don't love his family but because I didn't marry his family-- I married him. 

Honestly, I think my husband will be relieved to lose the striving Mrs. C., the worry-laden wife who felt guilty for not having a pimento cheese recipe or not giving a rat's ass about Disneyland. I tried to care-- honestly, I did. But it's possible to love and enjoy life without visting the Epcot Center or chilling with Snow White. There are many ways to be happy-- many different formulas for fun. I've grown to accept that my idea of fun isn't popular or cool-- and that taking his name didn't make me a better person or mother or wife. Only a less certain woman.

If my marriage can’t accommodate Alina Stefanescu, then my marriage is not related to me. Because I am Alina Stefanescu, a wild concoction of vowels, a name that crawls through teeth only to emerge as a song of myself, a racuous, immigrant litany.

Surreptitious daydreams while homeschooling.

While the kids work on their journals, I admire the sunlight and find myself captivated by the conversations of recently-read authors in my head. The motif is a combination of Ellis Island and Atlanta, Georgia, though I don't have any particular story I'm trying to tell about either. 

 The extraordinary grandchildren portrait

SAUL BELLOW: "Though everybody wished to be an American, everybody's secret was that he hadn't suceeded in becoming one."

The extraordinary family portrait.

LISEL MUELLER: "At her wedding, a woman gave up
half of her name
and exchanged it for another.
Half of her is public,
subject to trade; the other
private, treasure and loneliness,
what he thinks of as her ,
what she would share, if she could."

 The King's cross-stitch design and handwork

SAUL BELLOW: "Dreams are readmitted only through the Ellis Island of science, by officials qualified in the legitimate interpretation of dreams. Music we bootleg. We bring it across the threshold surreptitiously."

LISEL MUELLER: "At night, with the lights out
and the TV turned up,  
a woman whispers his secret name:  
it frightens and excites him,
like the hundredth name of God."

 The Eldest recoagulates.

SAUL BELLOW: "When the noise dies down you'll find yourself with the "I" you first knew when you came to know that you were a self-- an event which occurs quite early in life. And that first self is embraced with a kind of fervor, excitement, love-- and knowledge! Your formal schooling is really a denaturing of that first self."

HERBERT LOWENSTEIN: "If you are a poet, I hope you can use language not just as it is, an oily lubricant for the frictionless working of the system."

All family portraits were taken by the talented Wildnei Suane. You can see more of his work online at Willarts and schedule a photo session with him if you happen to be in Atlanta. Because Brazilian photographers rock.

Cause the ice skating rink melted.

Last night's torrential rains brought down branches and created new "creeks" in the woods behind our house. There's no time like the time after a big rainstorm watch watersheds in action.

S. and Prophet try to zip up their coats.

S. flashes a debonair grin while Prophet shows off her riot grrrrrin.

J. demonstrated a slight bit of jealousy when presented with the King's outrageous Zappa.

For every lovely moment in life, let there be green porta-potties in the background.

There was the seven square foot jagged rock with puddles in certain portions that captivated the kids. I don't know how many times the climbed the rock, teetering to and fro, looking like they might bust their heads, and then pooling all the energy to let out a passionate "yaaaaaar" and leap from the side of the rock onto the gravel below.

S. atop said gnarly rock.

Be still, my heart.

Little G. and his amazing, expressive eyebrows.

Little G. won't take no, maybe, or later for an answer. He follows his geist.

They are wild, unruly, wacky-yum-yum, and really cute to their parental units.

The past year in books and other minds I can't stop mining.

Fiction. Creative nonfiction. Avant-pop. Avant-garde. Dada. 2014 was a year of many events and occasions. Alas, when I look back, it's the books that leave footprints in my mind. The discoveries (and re-discoveries, in some cases) of my year-- not including books for younger people-- some of which disturbed more than they inspired but all of which illuminated dark corners and offered the candlelight's respite.

[A link means the text is available free online.]

A Lover's Discourse by Roland Barthes

The Notebooks of Malte Lorids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Disappearance of the Outside by Andrei Codrescu

The Shape of A Pocket by John Berger (an annual read)

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

Channels of Desire by Elizabeth and Stewart Ewen

Compulsory Happiness by Norman Manea

Selected Writings by Robert Musil (German Library Edition)

Panorama by H.G. Adler

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay (a must-read)

How to Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen

Light Years by James Salter

Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle

Mother Box and Other Tales by Sarah Blackman

Living Dolls by Gaby Wood

Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression by Robin D. G. Kelley

The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shacochis

The Holy Terrors by Jean Cocteau

The Prisoner of Guantanamo by Dan Fesperman

 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos and M. Mitchell Waldrop

Different Hours by Stephen Dunn

Fugitive Days: A Memoir by Bill Ayers

Strangers and Sojourners by Michael D. O'Brien

On Christmas Day.

Sleep is scarce.

The Eldest began using his holiday loom almost immediately.

Hand-painted ducky wrapping paper for Isla's gag gift.

Bunica and Ratpaw collected their handmade gifts, though I still have to finish stitching the ski pillow. It felt so different (make that "good", "cool", "spiffy") to have the King do the embroidery designs and stitching while I specialized in the sewing.

Uncle Germ scopes out the scene.  Shortly after this photo was taken, he began grooving to Gogol Bordello.